I write a lot about photobooks on this blog. The photobook world is small, a few thousand people, but it is dynamic. Sometimes it's too small and it gets too self-congratulatory. When it becomes most interesting is when it looks out of itself, That's when you get great photobooks that are great books - that touch on the world at large, that tie in with a bigger picture, and touch hearts and souls beyond those of the 10,000 people in the world who regularly buy photobooks.

Monday, October 27, 2014

Self-published in a small edition, Borissova’s (*) book (*) reached me from Russia. Here then is one of the beauties of today’s photobook boom, which to a large extent is fueled by the internet and its way of allowing for connections to be made: Stories from far away can be told and brought to one’s door step, without requiring the need of a major publisher. All it takes is an artist willing and able to make a book, and to allow for that little piece of art to sail off into the world - a piece of art not part of the electronically floating world, but a real thing, to be held and enjoyed.

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Any photograph is both more or less a record of what has happened, and more or less an artistically enhanced experience, both more or less empirical, and more or less interpretive, both more or less accurate, and more or less suggestive. The point here is that photographs –whether analogue or digital—operate in the interspace between reality and imagination. The camera records the surface of the world like no other instrument, but the truth of what is shown can be realized only through an act of imagination. Stated otherwise, the photograph is inherently not reducible to a simplistic realism, but is instead a heterogeneous object where different sources of meaning intersect, and the intersections are lodged in the formal design and explored through interpretation.

via A Realist Imagination (or is it An Imaginary Realism?) (*) by No Caption Needed (*).

Saturday, October 25, 2014

When you offer only love to the world you can never go wrong. I am becoming an example of this. We all share the same function of forgiveness and healing, and for me photography is a channel to express that. Be well.

via Peace G. Just stopping by to show love, it's been a minute. I see you've been getting some good looks lately, [..] Keep building, you'll have books and exhibitions in no time. (*) by Khalik Allah (*).

The trained eye can see more than the numbers. They see the elements that create them - the environment, human performance and emotion they reflect. I've learnt so much from the numbers and I know how to read them for the sport I have been participating for almost ten years now - an example (*).

I've also seen how the environment, physical and mental reflect their way into performance and as a result, the numbers. I guess it's called experience. You can sit back and let experiences pass you by without even noticing. But if you stop and reflect on the experience, you will remember the how's and the why's of the result. They feed back into future experiences and you will improve.

I do know what Vern talks about though. The numbers are a guide and should not be the be and end all. You have to be there to see how the human element influenced the performance, which are reflected in the numbers. It's the context Vernon talks about.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

It comforts me a bit that even if nobody pays attention to my work [..] during my lifetime, there might be a place for it in an archive. It is a humble end, but I find the prospect of being stored for future sifting by researchers or scholars immensely appealing.

I suppose this blog (*) will be my archive, my legacy, if there was to be a legacy, along with a beautiful old house (*), just maybe. And of course there is archive.org (*) - elj-daily (*) and GUERL (*). Amazing looking back at all of this just now. I've forgotten so much. What I do remember is how exciting it was to be connecting to people from all over the world. These were the early days of the World Wide Web and somehow I was part of it.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Kathy Ryan (*) writes on the Compulsion (*) of Photographing (*) a Building (*):

It is like a compulsion. I can’t quite explain where it comes from other than this truly extraordinary building. The combination of the light [..] that cast wonderful striping shadows [..] is extraordinary.

Monday, October 20, 2014

His subjects tend to stare back at his camera sadly or in a slightly bewildered fashion. Around them, the world tilts – the horizon line is seldom level – but there is always what might be called a Winograndian logic to his compositions, an instinctive grasp of the geometry of a good photograph. His interest was the rhythm of the streets and the people who created it.

Watching drama with subtitles shifts the perspective to take in more than can be fully understood. Once into the rhythm of this complex narrative, the sensation is truly that of entering another world.

The only TV Drama I seem to watch now is subtitled and mostly from a DVD. Recent favourites include The Bridge (*), The Tunnel (*), Borgen (*), The Killing (*) and now Salamander (*). I think it is partly because of the drama, but it is also because of the subtitles as Annabel so nice describes. Seeing the words helps me remember more than I would if I just hear it.

worked for 12 years to tell this story. He told it as a love story because he says that while war stories dark about death, war also illuminates love (*) which is the greatest expression of hope (*). It's what we live (*) for.

And because it's what we live for, it's what we want to read about. Flanagan has every reason to be self-indulgent and wallow in his father's misery, but it seems like he's translating the story for readership. He's reaching out, he's editing (*), he's adapting (*), he's simplifying (*), he's making it a story that has been written for the reader. It's written on the reader's terms.

I think an interesting question here is how often do photographers do this?; go out to the reader and sacrifice their self-indulgence to tell the story well? How often do they do this, how often don't they do this?

Monday, October 13, 2014

We know that snapshots are mostly boring, but a found photo—a snapshot or other non-art photo given meaning by someone who didn’t take it—can be boring, too: finding a photo can be as thoughtless an activity as taking one. Both logic and experience suggest that the percentages are no better for found photos than for any other kind. One way a found photo can be boring is to be derivative.

[..] imitation is something you don’t want to get rid of: cultural transmission couldn’t happen without it. There’s no bright line between an artist who imitates and one who is (productively) influenced, or between an artist who isn’t doing anything new and one who is carrying on a tradition. An artist who imitates is probably one who loves, and love is a good thing.

What is remarkable to me is less her ability to integrate herself and large camera into that community than what she has transcended. She achieves finding the moments of grace in the unexpected – a trait that photography is rife with and frankly at this stage, not surprising – but she uses the surrounding landscape to punctuate those moments filling the frame with additional visual textures – fences, television antennas, road signs, trees, building sides, and power lines – that feel weighty yet light, beautiful yet ugly, oppressive yet fragile and on the verge of collapse.

via The Nine and The Ninety-Nine by Katy Grannan (*) by Jeffrey Ladd (*).

Jeff's words are just as remarkable as the photos he describes and that is the reason they are here. Inspiration for me. As Seth wrote today (*) on writing, it is:

the ability to work on our words until they succeed in transmitting our ideas and causing action. [..]

you do have precisely the same keyboard as everyone else. It's the most level playing field we've got.

The first step is to say it poorly. And then say it again and again and again until you're able to edit your words into something that works.

I’m not sure. I’m an artist, and I thought it would be good to create a situation where I feel out of place and slightly fearful. I feel like you can only draw inspiration from circumstances. Inspiration isn’t really something that you can sit around and extract from your psyche.

via This spot in the park reminds me a bit of Massachusetts, so I... (*) by HONY (*).

Occasionally I have some prints made from the photos I have taken. It takes effort to get out there and to make photos. When I see them laid out like this, it surprises me that I have taken them and to see an apparent theme that seems to pervade them (which I had forgotten about). They are part of my archive (something I have never really thought about) and my life now. They make me understand (*) the influences (*) that have helped create them - a couple here (*) and here (*). Inspiration also comes from these influences, but more importantly the photos now provide the inspiration to get out out there and to see what else is waiting to be found (*). It's kind of self fulfilling in a way.

Maybe this blog is it for me. Sometimes I scroll through the entries here and it lifts my spirits - the words (which are mostly others - how I would like to communicate like that) but also the photographs I have taken. They remind me I am doing something with my life.

Thursday, October 9, 2014

The mid-20th century was when street photography became well known, thanks to photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Garry Winogrand and others. Armed with unobtrusive hand-held cameras, they rapidly snapped pictures of passersby, searching for unstudied compositions [..]

A fantastic book which I bought a few weeks before our big trip (*). So simple but so effective. It inspired us to go (*). Found a beautiful wildflower meadow (*) on the way. Surprising where a Photobook will take you, if you let it.

The genuinely untalented [..] probably have no idea that they’re no good—because they’re too untalented to realize it. (This is the “Dunning-Kruger effect [..] ) In short: if you’re worried you don’t measure up, that could well be a sign that you do.

Maybe there is some hope:

The real trick to producing great work isn’t to find ways to eliminate the edgy, nervous feeling that you might be swimming out of your depth. Instead, it’s to remember that everyone else is feeling it, too. We’re all in deep water. Which is fine: it’s by far the most exciting place to be.

via Nobody Knows What The Hell They Are Doing (*) by Oliver Burkeman (*) [swissmiss (*)].

Either you feel that a thing must be perfect before you present it to the public, or you are willing to let it go out even knowing that it is not perfect, because you are striving for something even beyond what you have achieved, but in struggling too hard for perfection you know that you may lose the very glimmer of life, the very spirit of the thing that you also know exists at a particular point in what you have done; and that to interfere with it would be to destroy that very living quality.

via Photographers on Photographers: Looking for the Ghost of William Gedney (*) by fototazo (*).

Monday, October 6, 2014

I am grateful to have inspired you, ultimately that is my focus. Inspiration is spiritual. Inspiration is of God.

via Just watched your doc. It was so insightful and humble to the max! Love your work your photographs are a great inspiration for my artwork! Your one amazing being! Sending love from South Carolina! (*) by Khalik Allah (*).

Sunday, October 5, 2014

the almost magical appearance of Maier's work, as if it had been conjured, has not only inspired much further creativity and contemplation about the nature of photography, it has also shown how their own interests and approaches have crossed paths with Maier's.

We always need to think of a way of activating the past with respect to the present. We couldn't assume Maier to have had an influence on contemporary practice, however all the artists in this exhibition are acutely aware of not just her work but the complexity of her identity.